The Congress that was elected to end the war just voted to fund the war. Congresswoman Barbara Lee was not permitted to offer for a vote her amendment, which would have funded a withdrawal instead of the war. Groups that supported Lee's plan and opposed Pelosi's included United for Peace and Justice, Progressive Democrats of America, US Labor Against the War, After Downing Street, Democrats.com, Peace Action, Code Pink, Democracy Rising, True Majority, Gold Star Families for Peace, Military Families Speak Out, Backbone Campaign, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Voters for Peace, Veterans for Peace, the Green Party, and disgruntled former members of MoveOn.org.

True Majority was a late addition to the list. The organization polled its members. Did they favor the Pelosi bill to fund the war but include various toothless restrictions on it, or did they favor the Lee plan to use the power of the purse to end the war by the end of the year? Needless to say, True Majority's membership favored the Lee plan.

MoveOn polled its membership without including the Lee alternative, offering a choice of only Pelosi's plan or nothing. Amazingly, Eli Pariser of MoveOn has admitted that the reason MoveOn did this was because they knew that their members would favor the Lee amendment. The following is from a report on Salon.com:

"Pariser defends his e-mail. He says that the group already knew that its members would have supported Barbara Lee's plan, but whatever MoveOn did, it would never have passed. What MoveOn didn't know was what its members thought about the Pelosi plan. 'The choice that we needed to make as an organization was, Do we support this thing or not?' Pariser says. 'And so I think the e-mail was a very fair presentation of the choice that was actually in front of the organization.'"

Pariser is simultaneously admitting that he knew his members favored the Lee amendment to quickly end the war by defunding it, and claiming that he did not know whether his members preferred Pelosi's weak anti-war gestures to nothing at all. This makes no sense. Are we supposed to imagine that Pariser honestly believed there was some chance that his membership would read his praise for Pelosi's bill and then vote for nothing at all instead of supporting it? Of course not. The point of the poll was to allow MoveOn to announce that its membership supported Pelosi rather than Lee. Yet Pariser admits that he did not offer MoveOn's membership a choice of Lee's plan because he knew they would vote for it.

SOME COMMENTS AT THE LINK:

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I voted in the MoveOn "poll" with full knowledge of what was going on. Barbare Lee's proposal stood no chance in the real world with DLC and Blue Dog representatives, Even if it was adopted, the Senate would have shot it down because there aren't 60 votes to end the war at all, let alone immediately. I definitely didn't feel pushed by MoveOn's poll.

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Peace on Earth

wharfrat

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Here's the deal: When I voted Democratic in November '06, I voted to end the war and to impeach Chimpy & Co. Period. I don't care if it was realistic or not; what I DO care about is that my voice was heard, that on record somewhere I state, very loudly, that I'm over the lies, deceit, and bullshit.

To say that something has NO chance is a cop-out, a coward's way of perceiving the situation. The fact is that the system is screwed up, that Dems are in bed with the Repukes, and that the whole two party system needs to be scrapped. We have been betrayed by the Dems, folks...they did the exact opposite of what we wanted, and MoveOn assisted in keeping "the people" subdued like a good castrated lackey should. There's a bigger picture here than the survival of the Democrats; it's called the survival of the United States of America, AND of the Global Community. The Dems and their survival no longer mean a damn thing to me.

So, scream out what you WANT, not what you think will pass. Rage against the crap and don't back down. MoveOn is a sellout, and so is anyone who agrees with their candyass compromises.

TiredoftheBS

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"Behind every great fortune lies a great crime."Honore de Balzac

"Democrats work to help people who need help. That other party, they work for people who don't need help. That's all there is to it."~Harry S. Truman